The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) and the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) have sent a joint letter to President Barack Obama, offering help in improving the delivery of healthcare in the United States through systems engineering principles.
The letter, signed by AAMI President Mary Logan and INCOSE President David Long, came in response to a report released in May in which the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) championed the use of systems engineering in healthcare. Despite the advantages of using systems thinking — such as improved patient safety and a reduction in waste — several barriers hamper the increased use of systems thinking in healthcare.
“We wanted to offer our joint expertise to help overcome the barriers to systems engineering in healthcare,” said Logan. “We applaud the recognition by the PCAST that systems engineering is needed to improve efficiency and patient safety.”
The PCAST report proposed seven recommendations for boosting the use of systems engineering in healthcare:
• Speed the alignment of payment incentives and reported information with better patient outcomes
• Accelerate efforts to develop a health-data infrastructure
• Provide national leadership in systems engineering by increasing the supply of data available to benchmark performance, understand community health, and look at broader trends
• Increase technical assistance to healthcare professionals
• Support communities in systematic healthcare improvement
• Incentivize the use of systems methods in healthcare
• Build competencies and workforce for redesigning healthcare
In the joint letter, AAMI and INCOSE, a nonprofit that has promoted systems engineering principles in the aerospace, automotive, transportation, energy, and biomedical industries, positioned themselves as uniquely qualified to help the administration’s efforts.
For more information, visit the AAMI website.
